Clarence Thomas Failed to Disclose Real Estate Deal with GOP Megadonor

it says democracy Now democracynow.org The War and Peace report I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez we look now at the growing calls for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to step down or be impeached a second damning propublica report on his relationship with Republican Mega donor Harlan Crowe has revealed that in 2014 Thomas and his family sold a house in two vacant Lots in Savannah Georgia to Crow for around 130 thousand dollars but never disclose the sale which appears to be a violation of the 1978 ethics and Government Act CNN reports Thomas's mother lives in the home owned by Crow rent-free but she's reportedly responsible for paying the property taxes and insurance on Sunday the Washington Post reported Thomas has for years claimed rental income from a Nebraska Real Estate firm that shut down in 2006. it's also been reported previously that in 2009 Crow gave half a million dollars to a conservative lobbying group founded by Thomas his wife Jenny Thomas CNN reports Justice Clarence Thomas now intends to amend his financial disclosures in light of propublica's other recent bombshell investigation detailing unreported luxury trips Harlan Crowe lavished on Thomas over two decades in apparent violation of a law of requiring justices and other Federal officials to disclose most gifts Thomas frequently vacationed at crows Resort in the Adirondacks of New York where a painting on the walls depicts Clarence Thomas sitting with four other men including Harlan Crowe and Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society Thomas never reported any of the free trips as gifts in addition to being a major benefactor for Thomas and the GOP Crowe is also an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia he's got a signed copy of mineconf that's right signed by Hitler paintings by Hitler Nazi Medallion swastika embossed Linens and a garden filled with statues of 20th century dick taters for more we're joined by Justin Elliott once again reporter for propublica their new follow-up report headlined billionaire Harlan Crowe bought property from Clarence Thomas the Justice didn't disclose the deal Justin welcome back to democracy now I mean your initial report has Unleashed Unleashed an avalanche of reporting and investigations and calls for Clarence Thomas to be impeached or to step down he says he's going to amend his um disclosure forms can you talk about the latest findings yeah you know for our first story both Thomas and Harlan Crowe put out statements about the the luxury travel saying we're very close friends uh these are family trips uh hospital they both use the word Hospitality um we subsequently learned and reported that there was actually a direct business deal a real estate deal between the two men so actual money flowing from uh Harlan Crow to Clarence Thomas what we found is that around a decade ago Crow bought a house and two vacant lots that were owned by by Clarence Thomas and some of his relatives down in Savannah Georgia uh you know as you mentioned the house that Crow bought um is actually the house where Thomas's elderly mother was living and apparently still lives which puts crow in the extremely unusual position of being the landlord to the mother of a sitting Supreme Court Justice although it's actually not clear if landlords the right term here because uh CNN has reported that Crow is not charging her rent uh so there's all kinds of exceedingly unusual Financial entanglements between this uh billionaire political donor and the Supreme Court Justice and Justin what about this claim that they've been long time friends what were you able to find out about how uh Thomas uh uh and the bill and Harlan Crowe first met and how their friendship developed so I think they actually are friends uh but it turns out that um at least according to Crow uh they met back in the mid-1990s so this was after uh Thomas was on the court um it's they weren't like college roommates or something like that uh they actually apparently met at a conservative political conference and uh Crow gave an interview to the Dallas Morning News a couple days ago in which he says that uh they actually first met when Crow offered Thomas uh it turns out a private jet ride on on Crow's Jed um from uh Washington DC to Dallas and apparently they they hit it off on the jet so that's what we know about about how it started so from the start then uh the uh Thomas was accepting in essence of undisclosed gifts from uh Crow yeah I mean you know I have personally never been on a private jet but I've learned a lot about them and uh you know these things I mean Crow's current gen uh it's a particularly nice private jet it's a global 5 000 Bombardier uh if you were to Charter One of These on the open market you'd be paying fifteen thousand dollars per hour uh per flight hour so yes these are extraordinarily expensive flights and it's obviously not a not exactly a normal situation to offer somebody you just met a private jet ride um but again I mean Clarence Thomas was a Supreme Court Justice at the time so I think that probably goes a long way to explaining why this happened and can you talk about um Jenny Thomas Clarence Thomas's wife the connection here and the financial connections with Harlan Crow I mean the getting more than a half a million dollars per um lobbying group that's right so I think one of the other really intriguing uh Financial connections here between Crow and the Thomas family is related to Jenny Thomas so it actually came out around a dozen years ago that uh Jenny Thomas was running a small tea party group non-profit political organization um and it came out that uh that none other than Harlan Crowe was pretty much the sole funder of that group that was paying Jenny Thomas's salary which I believe was on the order of two hundred thousand dollars a year so essentially through this kind of pass-through organization um Crow's money was ending up uh you know in in uh in the pocket of of the of the Thomas household uh following that reporting around a dozen years ago um there was sort of another round a previous round of questions about this but um and and we don't really know what has happened since then parley actually thanks to the Supreme Court as you know so um the the whole regime of disclosure of political spending and giving to groups has really Fallen apart and there's there's Anonymous dark money flowing all over the place so it makes it very difficult as a reporter to figure out uh where money is flowing and from who but you know we're still reporting on all this and Justice Thomas has claimed that Crow has no business uh before The Supreme Court but for those who do not know uh of our of our audience who do not know Crow who is he uh and what would be his interest in uh being able to have this friendship with Thomas so Crow is a real estate billionaire he was born into a very successful Dallas real estate family and it is true that uh Crow has has not had um he's not been a litigant in a case of the Supreme Court it turns out the Supreme Court doesn't actually take that many cases every year so there's very few people and companies that are actually have a case at the court but the court regularly uh takes up matters that affect the real estate industry that uh the real estate trade groups that Harlan Crowe helps fund is involved in some of those cases filing briefs and that kind of thing but I think the larger issue is that Crow has a whole set of ideological interests related to the court um he's a funder of a number of groups that specifically uh push conservative legal theories groups like The Federalist Society he's on the board of a number of think tanks like like the American Enterprise Institute that do a range of work on a range of issues but among them issues related to the Supreme Court advancing conservative legal theories so it raises the question and we don't really know the answer at this point of whether uh Crow and sort of his other friends who he's bringing on some of these trips with uh justice Thomas are you know having any influence uh on the justice and you know even shifting a supreme court justices thinking a little bit on an issue if that ended up in an opinion I mean it could have just enormous consequences for basically all of us well Justin Elliott I want to thank you for being with us reporter for propublica we will link to your reports

Channel: Democracy Now!

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Id: rV5bmQiuFZg

Length: 9min 26sec (566 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 19 2023